CAM Auditorium, 27 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA
Free and open to the public. Registration required.

Poet and author Charles Stein will give this year’s annual Charles Olson Lecture, presented in partnership with the Gloucester Writers Center. Stein is the author of thirteen books of poetry including Views From Tornado Island (forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil), a new verse translation of The Odyssey (North Atlantic Books), From Mimir’s Head (Station Hill Press), and The Hat Rack Tree (Station Hill Pres). His prose writings include a vision of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Persephone Unveiled (North Atlantic Books), a critical study of poet Charles Olson’s use of the writing of C.G. Jung, The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum (Station Hill Press), and a collaborative study with George Quasha of the work of Gary Hill, An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works & Writings, Ediciones Poligrafa.

The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum is Stein’s major work on Charles Olson. The book explores Charles Olson’s visionary poetics and the extensive use he made of the writings of Jung. Offering numerous readings of poems from the “Maximus” series, Stein provides a useful and clearly written introduction to the major themes, cosmological speculations, and poetic inventions of Olson’s work. Using the poet’s notes and marginalia, Stein reveals complex interrelationships of language, geography, and the human body, leading to The Maximus Poems as an archetypal vision of the self.

Stein currently teaches a course in the MFA Writing on The Arts program of The School of Visual Arts in New York. He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

Join us at the Little Arts Cinema in Rockport to hear a reading by Cheryl J. Fish and a conversation between Fish and GWC’s own Heidi Wakeman.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of multiple collections, including Teaching While Black, the Colored page, and The Third Renunciation. He
is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com.

Kevin Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston with his family and Rexroth, the family German Shephard. The former Gloucester resident’s latest book is And Yet It Moves (MadHat). Recent books are The Wild Goose (Loom), Radio Plays (Dos Madres) and Loom (MadHat). Gallagher edits spoKe,

a Boston-based annual of poetry and poetics. He works as a Professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, where he directs the Global Development Policy Center.

JoeAnn Hart, Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, by JoeAnn Hart, won the 2022 Hudson Prize, sponsored by Black Lawrence Press. In this collection of short fiction, characters struggle with Covid, ecological destruction, and grief as they attempt to find solace and restoration from a nature that is not always in a position to give back. JoeAnn Hart is the author of the books Stamford ’76, Float, and Addled. She lives in Gloucester.

Sara Johnson Allen, was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. Her first novel, Down Here We Come Up, is the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in August 2023.

Peter Anastas (1937-2019) was a writer, teacher, activist and social worker who spent his life immersed in the preservation of Gloucester, Massachusetts and its cultural heritage. His publications include Glooskap’s Children: Encounters with the Penobscot Indians of Maine, the novella Landscape with Boy, the memoir At the Cut, and the novels Broken Trip, No Fortunes and Decline of Fishes. His collection of newspaper columns A Walker in the City: Elegy for Gloucester was reprinted by Lost & Found Elsewhere: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and Dogtown Books in March, 2023.

Erica Funkhouser’s most recent book of poetry
is Post & Rail, winner of the 2017 Idaho Prize for Poetry (Lost Horse Press, 2018). Five previous books of poetry were published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Alice James Books. She has written short fiction, essays and plays. Funkhouser teaches writing at MIT and lives in Essex, MA.

J.D. Debris is the author of The Scorpion’s Question Mark (Autumn House Press, 2023), winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. He holds an MFA from New York University, where he was
a Goldwater Fellow. His work has received further fellowships and awards from DISQUIET, Narrative, Ploughshares, and Mass Poetry. He is currently
a visiting lecturer at Salem State University.

“Charles Olson and the Academy”  takes an interest in Charles Olson’s work during his lifetime and published books about him — including Ralph Maud, George Butterick, Charles Boer and Ann Charters.  Caught by the force of his personality as much as by the power of his work, we re-created his library, edited his writing, described his lifestyle, and photographed him during his walks around town — trying to capture the living spirit of this remarkable Gloucester poet."

Catherine Strisik is a poet, teacher and editor. She was the '20-'21 Poet Laureate of Taos, N.M and is a recipient of the Taoseña Award for Woman of Impact. She is the author of Insectum Gravitis, The Mistress, and Thousand-Cricket Song. Her poetry has been translated into Greek, Persian, and Bulgarian. She is the co-founding editor of the Taos Journal of Poetry. Cathy attempts to divide her time between Taos and her hometown, Rockport, MA. Find out more at cathystrisik.com

Ani Gjika is the author and translator of eight books and chapbooks of poetry. Her translation of Luljeta Lleshanaku’s Negative Space won an English PEN Award and was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, the PEN America Award, and Best Translated Book Award. She was a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow at Boston University in 2011 and a Pauline Scheer Fellow in GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator program in 2019. She has taught English and writing in the U.S. and Thailand. Gjika lives in Framingham, Massachusetts.

YOUTH Open Mic

All Work Welcome!!

Poetry,Short -Stories, Music, Fiction

Non-Fiction, Memoirs, Standup Comedy

All Work Welcome!!